TuxBloxLauncher

Every TuxBlox program you can run from a terminal has a page here, and this one is the launcher itself.

Nothing in this section is required for normal use. It exists for scripting, for headless machines, and for people who would rather not click.

~/.tuxblox/TuxBloxLauncher

Run with no arguments, it opens the launcher window. With an argument, it does one specific thing and exits.

--allow-root can go anywhere on the line and combines with any of the others. Without it, TuxBlox run as root refuses to start and says so. With it, it prints a warning and carries on. You almost certainly do not want it: a virtual drive built by root is one your normal account cannot write to afterwards, and every later launch fails in a way that looks like a broken install.

Two more exist but are meant for TuxBlox's own use rather than yours:

--run-exe only accepts RobloxStudioBeta.exe or RobloxPlayerBeta.exe and refuses anything else. It ignores the rest of the path and works out which Roblox to start from the filename, which is why an old shortcut keeps working after Roblox updates.

Installing and updating Roblox

Three more arguments install and update Roblox, not TuxBlox. They are the program behind the small window you see when Roblox has a new build to download, which was a separate TuxBloxBootstrapper program until 3.4.0 and is part of the launcher now.

You will usually never run these yourself. The launcher runs --update-roblox before every launch while Auto-Update Roblox is on, which is the default — see Updates. They are here because they are normal arguments you can pass, and because scripting an install needs them.

Warning

Do not run these with sudo. Roblox would be installed into the virtual drive as the root user, which leaves files your own account cannot write to afterwards, and every later launch fails in a way that looks like a broken install.

--update-roblox is the quiet one: it checks whether the channel has a newer build than the one you have and fetches it only if it is missing, showing no window when there is nothing to do. --preview-rbxinstaller is the opposite — it opens the window and touches nothing, which is the one to reach for if you want to see what it looks like.

Two of them on the same line is an error, and so is a stray argument after one of them, so a mistake cannot quietly change what gets written to your disk. A mistyped flag name is a different matter: it is not recognised as one of these at all, and opens the launcher window like any other unknown option.

The environment is the argument

--install-roblox has no flag saying which Roblox to install. It reads that from five variables, which is why they are documented here rather than with the environment variables that steer a launch.

Note

DOWNLOAD_RBXCHANNEL is Roblox's release channel, not the TuxBlox update channel from Updates. They are unrelated, and setting one does nothing to the other.

When the launcher updates Roblox before a launch it sets only two of the five — the app to fetch, and where the versions folder is — and lets the rest default. That is worth knowing if you are reproducing what it does: you need far less than the full set.

Leave INSTALL_DIR alone unless you mean to install somewhere unusual. Without it the folder is worked out from the launcher's own location, which on a normal install lands on the versions folder inside the virtual drive — …/pfx/drive_c/users/<user>/AppData/Local/Roblox/Versions, which is where TuxBlox looks. Set it explicitly if you want to be certain, and note that naming a plain path like ~/.tuxblox/roblox installs Roblox somewhere TuxBlox will never find it.

# Fetch the newest Studio build into the folder TuxBlox already uses
TUXBLOX_BOOTSTRAPPER_DOWNLOAD_APP=studio ~/.tuxblox/TuxBloxLauncher --install-roblox

Examples

# Start Studio from a script
~/.tuxblox/TuxBloxLauncher --launch-studio

# Open a place file
~/.tuxblox/TuxBloxLauncher --open-file ~/Places/MyGame.rbxl

Note

Only one launcher window can be open at a time. The direct launch options above are not affected by that, so you can use them while the window is open.